Prosecutor takes helm of Georgia case against Trump. But will he move forward?

ATLANTA – A veteran prosecutor said Friday he is appointing himself to take over Georgia’s closely-watched election interference case against President Donald Trump and more than a dozen others.

Pete Skandalakis, the head of the state agency tasked with naming a replacement prosecutor after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified, said he could not find another attorney willing to take over the racketeering case.

“Several prosecutors were contacted and, while all were respectful and professional, each declined the appointment,” said Skandalakis, the executive director of the nonpartisan Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, in a press release. He declined to share their reasoning, but said “the public has a legitimate interest in the outcome of this case.”

“Accordingly, it is important that someone make an informed and transparent determination about how best to proceed,” he said.

The case is the last remaining criminal indictment against Trump.

Skandalakis was under a tight deadline to name a replacement. Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has suggested he’s eager to move the case, which was indicted more than two years ago, out of legal limbo. He had given Skandalakis until Friday to make a decision and threatened to dismiss the case if the Attorneys’ Council did not name a so-called conflict prosecutor.

Willis and her office were kicked off the case in September after the state Supreme Court declined to overturn a lower court ruling that removed them because of a romantic relationship Willis had with Nathan Wade, the private attorney she’d hired to lead the case.

As the new prosecutor, Skandalakis has the power to slim down the case, though it’s possible he would need to draft a new indictment. He could also kill it outright or move forward with it intact.

If Skandalakis ultimately recommends dismissing it, Fulton County taxpayers could be on the hook to reimburse the 19 defendants for their legal bills under a new state law. That could cost the county millions of dollars.

Previous skepticism of electors

A Republican prosecutor widely respected by legislators and attorneys on both sides of the aisle, Skandalakis is already familiar with a portion of the case’s investigative file.

Last year, he appointed himself to review evidence Fulton prosecutors had collected about Lt. Gov. Burt Jones after a judge had removed Willis from that portion of the case.

In September 2024, Skandalakis announced he did not believe there was enough evidence to pursue criminal charges against Jones, now a Republican candidate for governor, because of his role as a Trump elector in 2020.

Skandalakis concluded Jones did not act with criminal intent. He said Jones, then a state senator, was instead representing concerns voiced by some of his constituents and following legal advice laid out by attorneys who addressed the gathering of GOP electors before they cast their votes in a ceremony at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020.

Many close observers of the election interference case believe that Skandalakis’s decision not to pursue charges against Jones means he would be inclined to dismiss the broader section of Willis’s case involving the GOP electors.

Three Republican leaders — former party Chairman David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party — were ultimately indicted for their actions as electors.

“He held that Burt Jones was acting on advice of counsel and didn’t have the requisite criminal intent,” former prosecutor Chris Timmons said of Skandalakis earlier this fall. “Well, that same advice of counsel would apply to the” three other GOP electors, he said.

Skandalakis also previously suggested that pursuing criminal charges against Trump may not be feasible until after he leaves office in 2029. Many constitutional law experts agree.

Trump is the central figure around which Willis’s racketeering case is based. The 41-count indictment alleges that Trump orchestrated a sweeping criminal enterprise, enlisting his supporters to “knowingly and willfully (join) a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump” in Georgia.

The indictment lays out several areas of alleged criminal misconduct, including:

•Several phone calls Trump placed to Georgia officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr;

•The actions of the Republican electors who cast Electoral College votes for Trump after Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the winner in the state;

•The false testimony Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others delivered to state House and Senate committees, including about vote counting at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. The latter led to violent threats against Fulton County poll workers;

•The copying of sensitive Georgia elections data in Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, in January 2021.

No other options

Skandalakis is the former DA of the five-county Coweta Judicial Circuit, based in LaGrange.

The Atlanta native became executive director of the Attorneys’ Council in 2017. There, he has handled a number of high-profile cases, including his decision not to prosecute Atlanta police officers Garrett Rolfe and Devon Brosnan for the killing of Rayshard Brooks in June 2020.

Whenever a prosecutor is removed from a case due to a conflict of interest, it is up to the council to name a replacement.

Skandalakis generally has the power to appoint a sitting DA from anywhere in the state, a staff attorney from the council or himself to oversee a case. Or he could select an outside attorney, though the council can only pay them about $65 an hour for their work, a small fraction of many lawyers’ regular rates.

Skandalakis previously said he would focus on finding a replacement DA from an office with a similar constituency and level of resources to Fulton’s. He also said he wouldn’t assign a prosecutor against their objections.

He apparently found no takers, even among politically ambitious Democratic DAs in larger metro Atlanta counties.

There are several factors that may have dissuaded those prosecutors from raising their hands.

Ever since Willis’s romantic relationship with Wade was exposed, the case has evolved from highly politicized to radioactive. Its lead defendant is a sitting president who doesn’t hesitate to attack his opponents on social media and behind the Resolute Desk. Willis regularly receives death threats and travels with around-the-clock security — hardly the kind of attention many local DAs want.

Many prosecutors’ offices are understaffed and have struggled to catch up with their caseloads in the aftermath of the pandemic. Taking on the probe likely would have required naming a relatively large team to pore through the evidence, process pretrial motions and take the case to trial.

Many prosecutors are also unfamiliar with Georgia’s expansive RICO statute that Willis used to build her case.